New water meter

Friday, 3:52 pm

By Kate

Feb

08

2008

A couple of weeks ago, a notice came in my mailbox saying that the water utility would be sending someone out in the next couple of weeks to replace my water meter. And much rejoicing could be observed in this house. I thought my old water meter was virtually worthless from the consumer point of view. So, yesterday, when a truck pulled up out front with lettering suggesting a utility meter company, I was a happy camper. A young fellow hopped out and knocked on my neighbor’s door. He hauled his equipment inside and I heard some banging and clanging around in her basement. It took all of 15 minutes and he was out the door. He went across the street next. And then...it was my turn. I was ready for him—I’d put the throw rugs down from the front door to the kitchen so that he wouldn’t track dirt/mud across my carpet. He was very careful to walk on them when he came in.

It only took him a few minutes to swap out the meter and attach a radio transmitter to one of my floor joists in the basement. When he came back upstairs, he made a bit of small talk and before you know it, I knew his entire life history. He is a young fellow, 28 years old. He has a wife and a 2 year old living in New Joisey. He’s been on the road for 6 months—two of them in Connecticut and four in Massachusetts. He doesn’t see his family except on weekends and he misses them a lot. This isn’t the best job he’s ever had, but he’s grateful for it. It pays really well and there are contracts stretching into late next year. He will have dependable work for quite some time. That makes him feel good in these unsure times. Oh, and he has never seen so much snow in his life as in Massachusetts this winter. As far as he’s concerned, he’d like never to see this much snow again, either.

He gave me a brief rundown of how the new water meter works. All the data is transmitted via radio signal. Although we will still have meter readers, they will be able to drive past an area and pick up hundreds of meter readings without having to drive past the specific houses. That’ll save a lot of fuel for the utility. At some point, the utility expects to install data collection units in various parts of the region that will automatically collect the data from all our meters and upload to the utility on a daily basis. Pretty cool.

Anyhoo, this is the shiny new meter he installed in my basement. I’m already in love with it. Not only is it a whizz-bang device for the utility, it is really useful for the consumer. For once, my water meter measures water in tenths of a cubic foot. I can, with this meter, find out EXACTLY how much water something uses. AND, this meter also tells me if there is a low flow leak in my system.

See that little blue whirligig on the meter’s face? That measures the movement of any amount of water flowing through my house. I was not pleased, but not surprised, to discover that cute little blue thingy spinning while there was no water turned on anywhere in the house. That means, there’s a water leak. And I had my suspicions where it was. I ran upstairs and turned the water off to the toilet and ran back down to look at the meter. The little blue whirligig was as still as can be. Well, that clears up the question of whether my toilet leaks. It does. So, until such time as I get around to replacing the toilet, I’ll leave the water to it turned off until it’s time to flush. I don’t know how much water that will save me over the course of a week/month/year, but I’m really curious to find out.

Since the meter was installed, it has registered .9 of a cubic foot of water use. That’s actually a lot less than what I previously thought was normal use over a 24 hour period. According to this meter, I’ve only used 6.7 gallons of water since yesterday afternoon. That’s kind of astonishing because it reflects a navy shower (with the pre-hot water running into a bucket for a later toilet flush) and a hand wash or two in the kitchen sink and a bit of dish washing. Seven gallons of water can accomplish a lot. A leaky toilet apparently wastes a lot. I’m going to have fun with this meter.